Senator Bob Graham: The CIA Made Up Two Briefing SessionsBy: emptywheel Thursday May 14, 2009 7:43 am | |
Bob Graham just appeared on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show. In addition to repeating earlier reports that he was never briefed on waterboarding, Graham revealed that the first time he asked the CIA when he was briefed on torture, it claimed it had briefed him on two dates when no briefing took place.
I didn't get Graham's exact quotes (and the quotes below are rough approximations), but when asked to respond to Philip Zelikow's assertion that members of Congress from both parties had been briefed on this program, Graham said that when he asked the CIA when he had been briefed on the program, the CIA gave him the dates of four briefings, two in April 2002 and two in September 2002, when they claimed they had briefed him about the program. But after Graham consulted his own records, he pointed out that on two of those dates, he had not attended any briefing. After Graham pointed this out to the CIA, they conceded their own dates were incorrect.
Graham then went on to repeat his claim that he had no recollection of being told about waterboarding Zubaydah or anything else about extreme interrogation.
In addition to repeating his earlier assertion that he would have remembered something that dramatic, Graham contextualized the briefing the CIA gave him--which occurred right in the middle of Graham's complaints about the inaccuracy of the Iraq NIE (the briefing on September 27, 2002 would have shown up just a few days after the British released a White Paper on September 24, 2002 that publicized for the first time the yellocake claim).
Occurred in September 2002, right in the middle of the NIE on Iraq where I was at open war with the Administration where I was at war with the Administration on the inaccuracies of that NIE.
As Graham went on to point out, given the way the CIA was lying heavily to make the case for war against Iraq at the time, there's no reason they should be trusted to tell the truth about the briefings they gave.
I'm a little surprised that Phil [Zelikow] would accept at face value on this subject when at the very same time they were telling us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
(We aren't. Zelikow was also the gate-keeper for the 9/11 commission, deciding what information the commission would hear and that which it would not. The Jersey Girls objected strongly to his involvement in the commission, since there was an obvious conflict of interest. He was Condi's assistant at the W.H. at the time of 9/11/01, just as he was at State, later.)
I was never in a briefing with House members. According to the CIA report, I was only at the September 27 meeting with one other senator, and surprisingly with two staff members, which would have been unusual.
The really damning thing, though, is the first point: CIA claimed Graham had been briefed on two days when no briefing occurred, which is not dissimilar from their claims that Jello Jay was briefed on February 4, 2003 when he didn't attend the briefing in question.
The CIA is just making shit up about these briefings, even to the point of claiming there were briefings when none occurred. Can we set aside, now, the notion that the CIA's own version of what it told Congress and when has no credibility in the least?
Let The Sun Shine In......
No comments:
Post a Comment
We post comments in English and only by followers of this blog. While anyone is free to read any of the material here, comments from self-identified, moderate to left-of-center independents are welcome to post after joining up. Others may comment by email and will occasionally be posted as well.